On Wednesday afternoon, two well-equipped guerrillas arrived in a taxi at the entrance gate of the Ankara facilities of the state-owned strategic defence company Turkish Aerospace Industries Corporation (TAI) and carried out a bomb and gun attack.
Four people died and 22 people were injured, including seven Special Branch police officers. The two people who organised the attack, a man and a woman, were killed after the clash.
Minister of National Defence Yaşar Güler suggested that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was behind the operation. Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said that both identified attackers were PKK members. But, significantly, the PKK has not issued a claim of responsibility.
TAI, whose website describes itself as “Turkey’s technology centre for the development, modernisation, production, systems integration and life-cycle support of aerospace industry systems”, has recently been a key pillar of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government’s “domestic defence industry” campaign. The Ankara plant where the attack was organised reportedly employs between 15,000 and 18,000 people.
CHP leader Özgür Özel also pointed to a provocation, saying: “When you see this attack, you cannot help but think how remarkable the timing is.”
In response to the attack, the Erdoğan government carried out air strikes on alleged PKK-YPG positions in Iraq and Syria overnight.
The Mesopotamia Agency reported that the air strikes targeted “the cities of Kobanê, Rimêlan, Amûdê, Til Rifat, Dêrîk, Qamişlo, Tirbespiyê, Qereçox Mountain and the village of Mêrkamira in northern and eastern Syria, killing 12 people and wounding dozens.”
The attack on TAI came on the heels of an unprecedented statement on Tuesday by Bahçeli, leader of the MHP, part of the “People’s Alliance” led by Erdoğan. Bahçeli suggested that jailed PKK leader Öcalan should lift his isolation and address parliament, “shouting that terrorism is completely over and the organization [PKK] has been dismantled”.
Bahçeli’s statement, supported by Erdoğan, was welcomed by the opposition DEM party and the CHP as the beginning of a new “peace process” with the PKK. On the morning before the attack in Ankara, Abdullah Öcalan was allowed to meet with his nephew Ömer Öcalan, DEM deputy for Şanlıurfa, as a sign of lifting the 44-month isolation imposed on him.
These unexpected developments come at a time when, in West Asia, the US-backed Zionist regime has turned the genocide in Gaza into a war of extermination, invaded Lebanon and is preparing a full-scale attack on Iran.
On Tuesday, Erdoğan revealed what was behind the attempt to negotiate with the PKK with these words: “While the maps are being redrawn in blood, while the war that ‘Israel’ has waged from Gaza to Lebanon is approaching our borders, we are trying to strengthen our internal front.”
Despite Ankara’s signs of a deal with the PKK through Öcalan, Turkey continued to target PKK-YPG forces, particularly in Syria and Iraq. “Last week, 45 ‘terrorists’ were neutralised, bringing the number of terrorists neutralised since 1 January to 2,194,” the Defence Ministry said in a statement on October 17.
While the Turkish ruling elites wanted to strengthen their hands and tighten their ranks in the face of the escalation of the war in West Asia by their allies, the US and Zionist regime—with whom they want to avoid a confrontation—it was unclear how the PKK leadership based in Iraq’s Qandil Mountain would react to Ankara’s initiative.
In an interview with Yeni Özgür Politika before the attack in Ankara, PKK leader Murat Karayılan drew attention to the escalating war in West Asia, the US-led transformation of the region and the possibility of redrawing borders:
Today our region, the Middle East, is boiling. The Third World War in the region is in a state of escalation, and it can be seen that it will develop more and more. The global hegemonic powers want to reshape the region with this war. This is clearly visible.
Karayılan said that the aim of the Erdoğan government is “to prevent the Kurdish people from taking part in the new design that may develop in the region and to condemn them to statuslessness” and added the following:
This war, which is developing ruthlessly with massacres in the region, will bring about some radical changes. This process may have some dangerous aspects, but it will also have some advantages and opportunities.
Karayılan stated that the PKK leadership, rather than Öcalan and the DEM party, would be decisive in any negotiations with the Erdoğan government: “Undoubtedly, as leader Apo [Öcalan] pointed out, the PKK and legal-democratic Kurdish politics have an important role to play in the solution. What the regime is doing is a simple tactic of playing one against the other. This should be avoided. The role that each of the Kurdish components can play must also be taken into account.”
The Zionist genocide in Gaza with the full support of the US, its attacks on Lebanon and its preparations for an all-out war against Iran are fueling a West Asia-wide conflict involving the major powers and regional states. The Turkish and Kurdish ruling elites are trying to consolidate their positions and advance their reactionary interests in this escalation. The claim of the bourgeois nationalist leaderships, which are closely linked to imperialism, to ensure “peace and democracy” in Turkey under the conditions of the escalating conflict on the Middle East front of the global war, expresses a greater fraud than ever before.